Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Long, long ago, before I had a blog, oh so many jobs ago, I noticed a pattern online that I loved, Tulip by Lisa Shobhana Mason.

I bought the yarn a few months later when I saw it in a yarn store in Chicago. The yarn then sat on one of my bookshelves until a month ago, when I swatched it. Whee! I love the feel of the Jamaica; crisp yet soft, and hey, machine washable!

Saturday night, after meeting some knitting deadlines, I STARTED. Here we go! It's like a little snack of a design that I hope to be wearing by the end of the week.

I've also fallen in love with the Bauhaus Geometric Throw from Yarnplay at Home. Lisa was fantastic enough to send me a little bit of Lorna's Laces Heaven, the yarn for the pattern, wrapped around a piece of cardboard that was the side of a 12-pack of Corona (loved this touch), so I could knit a swatch and see if it's "fluff cycle in the dryer compatible," since my two gigantic white cats necessitate fluffing out the cat hair of all our blankets on a regular basis. Here it is, after a fluff in the dryer... looks like we're on!

In the background is my new copy of Sexy Little Knits that I WON in craftivore's contest! I've never won before! Chris has already coopted it and it lives on his side of our big table now. I think I'll make a Blue Suede Bikini; why not? It's so small it shouldn't take more than a few days to knit...

Thursday, June 12, 2008

First off, you have until 5 pm tomorrow to VOTE! I'm currently in 3rd place, but I have already won the title of "longest entry" at 108 inches, so hey, it's all downhill from there, right?

So Maryjoo tagged me, and I need something to write about due to Deadline Knitting and Article Writing that I hope to wrap up by Sunday night. Here we go!

1. What were you doing ten years ago? I was between my Junior and Senior year at New York University, where I got my BS degree in Studio Art and English. However, I was not living in my Queens apartment at this point ten years ago, because I had a job as a counselor and art instructor at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in The Middle of Nowhere, Northern Michigan.

2. What are five things on my to-do list? Go to the gym (back and biceps tomorrow), work on Deadline Sweater, call my parents, get some, uh, waxing done, and stop picking at the sun rash bumps I have on my arms right now. That last one is going to be the most challenging.

3. Where have I lived? Grand Rapids, Michigan for the first 18 years of my life, then New York City (Manhattan for one year, Queens for three), and various neighborhoods in and around Boston. For one lovely summer I lived in Prien am Chiemsee in Bavaria, learning German among a lot of people who spoke nothing but. If I got the chance to choose, I would live in Bavaria.

4. What would I do if I was a billionaire? I would pay off my student loans and go live in Bavaria. Beyond that I can't imagine that much money. I would investigate various causes and donate.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

This past Friday I realized I have a knitting deadline on June 20. The days, they fly by lately! Could not get out of work early, ran to the subway, ran from the subway to Windsor Button in downtown Boston, got there 4 minutes before closing, and met Sockpixie and Susan, the owner, who were so nice as to let me in to browse for summer yarn for Deadline Project. I ended up with this, which Max loves:

Cotton Ease! Yay! I'm already well into the project and should be done by the end of the week. Love the Cotton Ease... cheap, not hard on the hands, machine washable, available everywhere, and the available colors are quite nice.

In other knitting, I've been working on Norah Gaughan's Noemi scarf for a gift. I'm using SWTC bamboo; love the color, love the drape, hate the weird splittiness. The construction is like a chain, and, if you're not super careful, you can hook a tiny thread of the chain that will then split away and cannot be reintroduced into its strand. If I use this yarn again it will not be for a pattern that involves ssk and the like.

Other than that, lots of biking and War and Peace reading. I'm almost 100 pages in, and loving it. I'm finding it surprisingly easy to read and engaging. Slow, yes, but I'm in no rush. If you're on Ravelry, check out the discussion.

More soon! I'll post as soon as the voting is up at Little Knits for the Trenna contest. All the competition is up there, five total, all very different. Check it out!